October 22, 2020 — An update in WP 5.6 is going to remove support for very old jQuery. I am a Senior Front End Developer for an agency that builds and supports over 40 WP sites a year. Our custom theme, Gesso, does not use older jQuery, but we do use a range of plugins based on the technical requirements of our clients. The jQuery version leap is quite large, and we are trying to account for all the plugins and different versions of these plugins that we use that may have flown under the radar utilizing now deprecated code.

We are currently using the jQuery Test Update plugin and jQuery Migrate on new builds, but we needed a more programmatic way to analyze sites that are currently deployed. First we want to get a comprehensive view of all the plugins we use and their versions. Then we are investigating the plugin code to determine if it uses old jQuery. If it does, we are either, updating that plugin’s version (see Custom Post UI), or taking it out completely if we can’t find a version that complies with the new requirement. Many of our clients are non-profit and government sites that are updated monthly. This WP update requires more rigor than usual, so we need a tool to help.

Enter PyGithub. PyGithub is a Python library that accesses the GitHub API. It allows you to run robust searches throughout all of your repos, when you need to do something more complicated than the GitHub search function will allow. I will demonstrate how to connect to the GitHub API and then drill down to the composer.json and pull out the plugin names and versions. Then I will show how to search within the code for offending jQuery.

I hope to have everyone using this simple tool to do all kinds of analysis on their WP repos, and provide people some confidence in updating sites to the latest version of WP without fear of breaking things. I will also cover some of the typical issues that we ran into regarding plugins, and older theme code.

October 22, 2020 — Every great design starts with great typography. We have the tools to make our layouts responsive, so isn’t it time we do that for our type? This talk explores how text reacts to a responsive context, how to manage how your typography within this context, and new technologies you can take advantage of to optimize the user experience.

Presentation Slides »

October 22, 2020 — Ever wondered about how to contribute to the WordPress Project? We’ll run though the WordPress teams and explain what they do and how to get involved. Then we’ll break up into smaller groups and get started!

*People of all skill levels are welcome to attend and participate*. There are a wide variety of ways to contribute to WordPress, and there are lots of ways to participate without having technical experience.

October 22, 2020 — Bash can unlock the true potential of any machine. Besides gaining more control of your device, Bash lets you leverage hundreds of power tools like WP-CLI, Drush, npm, composer, and Behat, to name a few.

Leave this session understanding:

How to stop being afraid of the command line
A brief history of Bash and how it does what it does
The basic commands for manipulating your files and folders
An overview of tools that are only available through the command line
The basics of scripting to automating anything

Presentation Slides »

October 22, 2020 — In this lighting talk, I’ll go through 10 tips for designers, developers, and marketing gurus how to run their WordPress projects effectively. Some will be knowledge and expertise, some will be tools, some will just be common sense 😉

October 22, 2020 — You picked a web host and set up your WordPress site – everything is cool! Until it isn’t. Maybe your site isn’t loading. Maybe your theme looks all kinds of broken. Maybe some jerks graffitti’d over your latest travel adventures! Now what?

Step one is determining whether your WordPress config is the reason or if you’ll need to contact your web host for a deeper dive into your hosting environment.

Different companies may offer different levels of technical support, but there is a basic and universal approach to getting your WordPress site back up and running again as quickly as possible. You’ll learn who to contact and why if and when your WordPress site ever runs into trouble.

October 22, 2020 — This lightning talk discussed a process of creating a custom news vertical for WordPress.com

October 22, 2020 — This lightning talk was a journalism-focused walk-through with the founder of a hyperlocal Local Switchboard NYC podcast.

Presentation Slides »

October 22, 2020 — BigCommerce for WordPress is a brand new way to do ecommerce in WordPress. With a hybrid of local content and processes running over API the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin can help your store operate at micro-scale, enterprise scale, and everything in between.

This talk is a review of features and capabilities.

October 21, 2020 — Anyone who has experience with WordPress Multisite knows how it works: Each site exists as a separate silo, and all content and tags stay within each particular site. But what if this compartmentalization didn’t have to be the case? What if the WordPress Taxonomy system could be used to create categories and tags that span across many sites? And what if related content from other sites in the network could surface no matter where in the network you happen to currently be? This talk will look at a plugin, developed at the Harvard School of Public Health, that does just this. It will discuss how this plugin allows many thousands of articles across the school’s some 2,000 websites to be tagged according to subject, indexed, and made easily available to users looking for further reading on any given topic. This system has wide, potential application for other settings in which WordPress Multisite is used.